


Don't Worry (Because I'm Terrified Too)

by Psilent (HereThereBeFic)



Series: I hope our time and place match again soon [2]
Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Episode Tag, Friendship, Gen, Post-Episode: e019 The Sandstorm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-24
Updated: 2013-10-24
Packaged: 2017-12-30 08:01:39
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1016125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/HereThereBeFic/pseuds/Psilent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Company and lemonade in the aftermath of horror.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

They don’t expect to meet in the break room, but for just one moment it’s almost normal to see each other there. Dana leans back into the couch, at ease once more now that she knows the footsteps were only Cecil, and watches him try to make coffee. His movements are jittery and his shoes are seeping red.

“You came back,” she says.

Cecil doesn’t say anything, and Dana waits for him to lose patience with the coffee machine. It hasn’t really worked right since its temporal grounding came loose last week – they keep finding the overflow tray flooded about three hours after someone tries to make something. Muttering to himself, Cecil edges around the ever-widening pit in the carpet and flings the fridge door open.

“The root beer is actually lemonade,” Dana says, chin resting on one hand. She counts silently backwards from five and Cecil loosens his grip on the door handle enough for his arm to stop shaking. “Are you okay?”

He tosses her a can of Diet Barq’s. It smells tangier than the last one when she opens it.

Cecil sits next to her and they sip their drinks in silence, and Dana is glad that the room’s only window has been boarded up since before she first arrived. For perhaps the first time in her life, she is perfectly happy having no idea what things are like outside.

“I don’t know where I was.” Cecil’s voice is hollow, and he is looking down, holding his drink between his knees and tapping the rim of the can with two fingers. “There was blood. It – it was a radio station, but there was–”

He falters, and Dana recognizes this, she thinks, from the few halting post-broadcast conversations she has attempted to start that mostly devolved into _Yes, **news**! Lots of it. _ He is out of eloquence. 

He swallows. “… _Everywhere_ , Dana.”

“Your poor shoes,” she laments, because that’s safe enough. As far as she is concerned, Cecil being so openly rattled is just another contribution to the pile-up of today’s strangeness, and she is pretty sure she can handle it, but maybe _he_ can’t, so she’ll give him this chance to change the subject. 

“Hm.” His fingers are still tapping, too quickly for idleness and too controlled for actual panic. “Sorry,” he says, and stops. 

Dana laughs, not unkindly. “I twist my hair when I’m nervous.” She takes another drink. It’s sharp and sour and every taste of it brings the world into slightly better focus. “I’m sorry I left. I couldn’t stay in there, with –“ She bites her tongue, shakes her head. “I _shouldn’t_ have left. I have a job to do.”

“I won’t report you if you don’t report me,” he mutters – and he glances sidelong at her and smirks, so she smirks back. It doesn’t mean they don’t mean it. But smirking is one of the better ways to cope with Station Management, when they’re not looking. 

“So –“ Cecil clears his throat. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but, ah, are you actually…” He trails off, starts tapping his drink again and then looks embarrassed about it – yanks one hand away and curls it into a tight fist, pressing down against the cushion between them. 

“I think so,” Dana says quietly. “As far as I know. I’ve been going over memories – testing myself, you know.”

“Oh?”

“When I turned thirteen, I wanted a pair of binoculars for my birthday. It was all I would talk about for months, and then my mom got me Will Redford’s _A Chant for Every Dire Occasion_ instead. I didn’t speak to her for a week.“

Cecil takes a drink and doesn’t quite laugh. “Ah, well. Everyone should read that at some point, I suppose.”

“It’s saved my life a few times.”

For several, pensive seconds, they sit quietly. Dana has never stayed this late after work without a concrete reason.

“I guess if I’m _not_ me,” she says, “it doesn’t really matter. I _think_ I’m me, I _remember_ _being_ me, so I’m… _me_. Whether I always have been or not.”

Cecil nods, and hums thoughtfully, and sips his drink and asks, “Had you killed anyone before?” and Dana guesses that there really wasn’t ever going to be a _good_ time to bring that up anyway.

“Not up close.” She picks a spot on the floor and doesn’t look away from it. “And not… not feeling like _that_. Like I – like I _had_ to. I killed her because she was trying to kill _me_ , and she was trying to kill me because _I_ was trying to kill _her_. Because… Because I _had to_.”

She goes to take another drink, but the can is empty. She tosses it into the coffee table-width chasm in the middle of the floor (slightly bigger, actually; they lost the table yesterday), same as the last one.

“Nothing was _controlling_ me, exactly,” she says. “I knew what I was doing, and I – _wanted_ … to be doing it. I just… didn’t know why. And I didn’t _care_ that I didn’t know why. And I _always_ care about the _why_ s, Cecil!”

“You’re twisting your hair,” Cecil says quietly.

She shrugs. “I’m nervous.”

But she drops her hand, and lays it over his without really thinking about it. Slowly, he loosens his fist, and turns his hand palm-up. 

“I wish it was a blur,” Dana murmurs. “Rushing at her one minute, and – the next she’s on the floor with a face full of staples, you know? But it’s not. I… remember. Every second of it.”

Cecil’s grip tightens. “It was _her_ or _you_ , Dana.”

“But _why_?”

He shakes his head, and Dana sighs, annoyed at herself because she knows better than to ask and annoyed at Cecil because sometimes he answers anyway.

“Was your double inside that vortex?” she asks, and his grip is suddenly so tight it _hurts_.

“ _Yes_ ,” he says, voice clipped. “In that – that blood-soaked, _gore_ -splattered – in that _place_ – I mean… He must have _come_ from there. We met in the vortex, but –“

And he breaks off, mouth still open, eyes wide. “We met in the vortex,” he whispers. “And before that, I… was in his studio. And _he_ – _he_ must have been…”

“I wasn’t listening,” Dana says, still staring at the floor. “I came in here right after you left and I – I covered my ears so I could _think_ …” 

“He didn’t hurt you.”

“No.” 

“Good.” The tension ekes out of his posture. He loosens his hold on her fingers and sinks into the couch. “Good.”

“What about you?” Dana ventures, because they’re so beyond _safe_ now it hardly matters. “Did you – you’re alive. You’re _you_. As far as I know. I’m _choosing_ to _believe_ you’re you, because I don’t feel like dealing with you _not_ being you. So…”

Cecil exhales slowly, shakily. “I didn’t kill him. I… I almost… I _tried_. And then I stopped.”

“Did he hurt you?”

“Not really. Some mild strangulation. Nothing we all haven’t dealt with before.” 

Dana nods. She remembers the first time her vision started going black – remembers the chant she just barely managed to wheeze, remembers something dark and wispy retreating with a yelp.

“Cecil,” she says, and she would feel worse about how small her voice is if his hand wasn’t trembling under hers. “I’m afraid to go home.” 

“I’ll walk you,” he offers instantly, and she shakes her head, smiling despite herself.

“No. I – thank you, but, that’s not what I mean.”

“…Ah.”

Cecil doesn’t tell her that he’s sure her family is fine. That her mother is still the mother who sang her to sleep until she was eleven. That her brother is still the brother who clings to her legs every time she comes home safe. 

Cecil offers no reassurances, and she’s not sure she would forgive him if he did.

He does say, “I don’t have anywhere to be,” and Dana texts home that she’s alive, and they finish the rest of the lemonade.

And then she lets him walk her home, because she’s still afraid, but that’s only allowed to stop her for so long.


	2. Chapter 2

After the sandstorm, they start talking more. They have always been _amicable_ , but now something seems to have – _dropped_ from between them, some barrier Dana was only vaguely aware of before its sudden absence. Cecil has always said hello when they passed in the hall, but now he stops to chat, even if he’s busy, and she smiles and stays and means it, even if she is. He has always encouraged her independent reporting, but now he eagerly reminds her to email him her latest scoop as soon as it’s done, and she types when she’d rather sleep because _someone_ _wants_ _to_ _read_ _it_.

Dana has always been _comfortable_ around Cecil, but now she looks forward to the fumbling small talk as they lock everything up after a show. She has always felt that she was in good company with him and that he thought the same of her, but now she feels like he’s – seeking her out, in an entirely innocent way. And she… doesn’t mind.

She feels like she’s making a friend.

And the thing is, she _gets_ it; she gets why it’s _her_ , why it isn’t and wasn’t any of the others; she gets that all of that _happened_ and she’s _still_ _here_. She was already more of a fixture than half of the furniture in the break room before the storm, and then she beat down a shrieking copy of herself with a stapler and she is _still here_.

So she gets why it’s her, and maybe it should make things bittersweet, but she hasn’t gotten close to anyone since high school because Mickey vanished and Ramea slipped and Marianna sat in the back of a police cruiser and slammed herself against the doors and howled louder than the sirens, and Cecil interviewed a Hooded Figure and he talks on public radio about things no one else dares to _think_ on too loudly and he walked into a vortex and walked back out with bruises and ruined shoes, and Dana is pretty sure he _gets_ _it_ , too.

Poetry week starts tomorrow. Typing anything up beforehand is illegal, of course, but Dana hums contentedly to herself as she makes breakfast and arranges the lines in her head:

_Nothing and no one is forever_

_Infallibility is the farthest hypothetical_

_A cruel and kind lie that children grow out of._

_But maybe we’re both_

_Close enough_

_And maybe_

_One more person to miss me_

_Will help me hold on when I need to._


End file.
